International Transaction Fee appearing on Credit Card when buying from AU Seller

[joes004]

Purchased a single item from an Australian Seller only to find a 5.1% International transaction fee on my credit card.

Called NAB (my CC provider) they advised the seller's account was in China and the monies requested was in their currency.

I found this to be very misleading and disappointment on eBay behalf.   

I have provided a solution to eBay on this issue in the past but it does not seem to be heard so I have decided to post this in the Community Forum.

EBay would be able to look at the sellers BSB account details and advise the perspective buyer that there could be additional transaction fees if you proceed with the purchase from this seller when their BSB is not linked to an Australian Bank. A full list of BSB can be found on http://bsb.apca.com.au/  (Australian Payment Network).

Notifying buyers is in the best interest for consumer, eBay and the seller. I hope they start to listen and implement this change as I am starting rethink about purchasing goods through eBay.  

Joe

[countessalmirena]

@joes004,

Is this the seller to whom you gave the following feedback?

Additional Intel Trans Fee charged. Sellers PayPal acct is linked overseas bank.

If so, the seller's feedback profile page shows very clearly that this is a Chinese seller, not an Australian seller.

                           Member since: 09-Jul-14 in China

(In a listing, clicking onto the seller's feedback percentage score leads you to the seller's feedback profile page.)

You may have been misled if the seller stated that the item location was somewhere in Australia. Unfortunately, even though eBay has an Item location misrepresentation policy, it cannot be properly applied to listings by Chinese sellers. Many eBay members still aren't aware that the item location information on a listing can be misleading. Either the seller flat-out lies, or the seller is using "Just in time fulfilment". (You can read about in this post.)

eBay Australia has so far not implemented a way to stop Chinese sellers from using misleading item location information, and in fact, eBay China encourages it. There is really very little point in reporting such listings or such sellers. Read here (especially in the "spoiler" section) to see why.

[davewil1964]

On top of what the countess has said, Paypal is the relevant entity you should complain to. eBay sold Paypal years ago and are no longer responsible for them or their account holders.

[digital*ghost]

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@joes004 wrote:

EBay would be able to look at the sellers BSB account details and advise the perspective buyer that there could be additional transaction fees if you proceed with the purchase from this seller when their BSB is not linked to an Australian Bank. A full list of BSB can be found on http://bsb.apca.com.au/  (Australian Payment Network).

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The issue isn't the seller's bank account - that is actually irrelevant, and only matters to the seller if / when they withdraw funds, plus I suspect there would be privacy issues surrounding PayPal passing on financial information to eBay, even if it does just identify the location of the seller's bank.

What sounds more likely to be the issue is that the seller's PayPal account doesn't accept AUD payments (if you sell online, you can receive any currency from around the world, but if you don't set up your PayPal account to actually hold balances in those currencies, it gets automatically converted to your primary currency, if that makes sense. For example, my primary currency is AUD, but I can also hold a balance in USD. If someone pays in AUD, that amount is added to my AUD balance. If I receive USD, then that money is added to my USD balance. If someone pays in Euros, it is automatically converted to AUD and added to that balance - I could add Euro and hold a balance in that currency as well if I wanted to).

This issue will either disappear completely, or increase (I honestly don't know), once eBay take over the payment processing from PayPal (when the new system comes in, I suspect in less than a year but that's pure speculation), eBay will receive all of the payments on behalf of sellers, no matter how the buyer opts to pay. This is how it works on another site I sell on too - I'm in Australia, my items are listed in AUD, and the bank account I receive the funds in after they're paid out to me is also in AUD, but occasionally Australian buyers will still get charged the foreign transaction fee because they're not paying me, they're paying the site, who are registered in Ireland. It's worth noting, though, that this only happens once every few months (meaning the majority of my Aussie buyers aren't hit with this, making it as much an issue with their bank as it is with the payment process). 

[marktheblake]

Old topic I know, but i think you are sending blame in the wrong direction.

I believe NAB is manually searching Paypal AUD transactions and assigning Overseas transactions fees on any that they deem to be an overseas seller,  because they are losing out an transaction revenue to Paypal.

Neither Ebay nor Paypal advise Visa that a seller is located overseas, and Visa is passing the transaction to NAB in AUD from their austraiian clearing house (and Paypal banks with Westpac) There is absolutely no cost to NAB for these transaciotns   NAB is just making this up and fee gouging.

Each time I got stung with this, the International fee hits my account one day after the transaction does - but they backdate it so the dates match.

Feel free to share any more info with me. This is really annoying me, and I should take this up with relevent govt authority. I just need more data, and hopefully a whistle blower 🙂

[audio-spot]

I think you will find that PayPal Australia uses a payment gateway outside of Australia for transactions where the funding source is a credit card and the seller is located outside of Australia. All the bank sees is a foreign transaction. If the funding source is a bank account, or the seller is located here, they use the Australian payment gateway.

The credit card fee for PayPal to process here might be as high as 1.1%. If they process in another country it might be 0.2% cheaper or more. Doesn't sound much but over millions of transactions per year and the savings for PayPal would be substantial. Not to mention that they can also hide the real transaction cost to help reduce their taxable income.

The solution is to use either a bank account as the funding source, or a credit card / bank that doesn't charge international transaction fees.

[lyndal1838]

Many years ago I was getting interntional fees on ALL paypal payments even when paying Aussie sellers in Aussie dollars.

On enquiring I was told it was because paypal was an American company so ALL paypal payments would attract the fees.

I dumped that card very quickly....not sure which one it was after all this time.

[joes004]

Hi marktheblake,

I believe you are correct in your assessment. They only time I see the International transaction fee is on my credit card statement.

I did contact eBay and they assured my they had not charged the fee. Contacted NAB and they were the ones advising the fund were requested in another currency. When I stated that I did not authorise a currency conversion and the purchase was made in AUD dollars. They said the merchants bank had requested the funds. They did refund the money the first time but have continued with the practice after the first call.

[marktheblake]

NAB frontline staff are reading from scripts and the complaints team make things up as they go along, whether thats a deliberate lie or just trying to fob us off I dont know.

[juddo76]

'm having a similar issue.  Ebay purchases, paid in AUD dollars in paypal, linked to NAB CC, are being hit with international transaction fees which only come to light when reading the NAB credit card statment - now where in Paypal is there any reference to them or, at the time of purchase, any indication that an international transaction fee might apply on a credit card purchase.  NAB told me that the fees are coded "SC" which means single currency - the offshore merchant can operate in AUD but sends $ to overseas bank - it's the $ going to overseas bank that triggers the fee.  

In my NAB credit card I have now switched off the setting that allows me to pay anyone overseas.

I sometimes pay the exact same merchanges from my paypal balance (in AUD dollars) rather than from my linked NAB Credit Card (also in AUD dollars).  The transaction fee that NAB charges doesn't appear in Paypal activity transactions, so when I pay from Paypal balance there must be no fee, so i'll be paying those merchants via a different method such as Paypal Balance or try a different linked account, & not using NAB credit card for them anymore.